Alibaba - no not what you think....

[Meerkat]

Does anyone on here use or is familiar with www.alibaba.com ?

I am not asking because I want to buy or sell pipes or anything to do with glass for that matter. I am looking to find a source or supplier for a product part that has to do with the non-glass/non-art business I run on the side.

They have what I want on the website, but the interface is majorly confusing and I can't even find out basic information such as the price of the product I want.

So if anyone can help, let me know...

and if you do wanna see the pipes on there just type in the keywords "smoking pipes" and all kinds of shit comes up.....

[organicglass.h]

i dont understand what your looking for

[Mike_Aurelius]

It is full of scam artists...not to mention a huge number of Nigerian wannabes...there are much better places to find supplies IMO.

[jusbag]

You have to email the factory that you want to do business with. The way I see it, it is just a big website full of different vendors and their email addresses.

I recently tried to get some LED light bases. I got one response back. Seems like that is about as far as it is going to go.

Good luck!

[Firekist]

Meerkat IS looking for those better places mike, help him out if you know of them!

thomas supply registry.. or whatever
http://www.thomasnet.com/
is the only thing i can suggest.. but it seems unorganized/not user friendly.

if you find some good links, let us know meer =)

z---seth

[Mike_Aurelius]

What in particular are you looking for?

[Meerkat]

I'm looking for a good and low cost source of portable washing machines. Basically like one of the top 4 on this page (the 4th one is exactly the model I want).

http://www.alibaba.com/countrysearch/CN-suppliers/Mini_Washing_Machine.html

I was finally able to make contact with the person selling the model I want, I got back an email in engrish along with an excell file of their prices. Great prices, only I have to order an entire container of them, which is something like 420 machines. There is no way I can afford that. I just want maybe a dozen. Right now the only place I can get them is from Bubble Bag headquarters in Vancouver, and it costs me over $100 USD in shipping per machine. Which is just fucking insane, I need to find a cheaper and/or closer source.

And this has nothing to do with glass, which was why I was not saying too much as I didnt want to put unrelated spam on the board. But if anyone can help out, it would be most appreciated.

[theamazingsandlad]

I've bought from sources on Alibaba.com a couple times for my side business. They are notorious for scams, but it worked out well for me both times. You might try www.globalsources.com, I found the networking tools a bit easier to use than Alibaba. They have a sister site, www.globalsourcesdirect.com, that lists smaller quantities of items. If there's something you want, you might try asking the supplier to list a smaller quantity on there. I think it's set up for sourcing commercial samples, so you avoid the import duties from buying off here as well. You can buy glass off globalsources, just the same deal with what you're looking for, you have to buy a traincar load at a time.